Making the Shrimp Christmas Tree from Bon Appétit 1974

Like many of the finer things in life, Bon Appétit only gets better with age. In Cooking from the Archives, we revisit recipes from the magazine’s past.

Albert Einstein described insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I’m pretty sure he was talking about Shrimp Trees.

In theory, the process was simple: Weave sprigs of parsley into wire-mesh screening affixed to a cone of styrofoam. And it started out innocently enough, as I did just that, separating out the parsley (flat-leaf, since the store didn’t have the curly kind) and carefully sliding the stems into the millimeters-wide squares of netting pressed against styrofoam. Within minutes, I’d completed a single parsley column. I admired it, noting that the first few parsley sprigs had begun to take on a droopy appearance. It was a test of time, and I frantically began adding more parsley sprigs to the tree. Alas, for every additional sprig I tucked in, a piece of parsley on the opposite side of the “tree” mysteriously untucked itself and fell to the base plate.

I continued steadfastly, but after 20 minutes of painstaking parsley-sprig application, the tree bore no more than a few sprigs. I thought about a lot of things during these 20 minutes: Was it the wrong type of parsley that was causing this problem? Had I purchased improper netting? Or was the prob em…me? What was my problem that I couldn’t get the parsley to stay in the tree? In fact, what did it say about me that I had chosen to inflict this repetitive trauma on myself? I was angry, frustrated, lost. And then I took a deep breath and remembered: I am making a Shrimp Tree.

What did it say about me that I had chosen to inflict this repetitive trauma on myself?

In December 1974, Bon Appétit ran an article called “Fiesta de la Navidad,” which describes how Spain celebrates Christmas with stalls of street vendors, turrones (i.e., nougat), a lottery drawing, and church services. There is no mention of shrimp, trees, or any combination until the lengthy essay’s final paragraph, where the author writes: “A Spaniard is credited with discovering America, so it seems only right that we in turn ‘discover’ Spanish treasure in the way of delicious holiday food to complement our own traditional observance of the season.”

Each of the subsequent recipes tweaks an American classic (e.g., cheese balls, meringue with bananas and cherry-orange sauce) with a “Spanish” touch, emphasis on the quotation marks. The most striking of these, of course, is the Shrimp Tree, which is to be accompanied by a “Spanish Sauce,” which is a blend of mayo, ketchup, and chopped-up pimiento-stuffed olives that essentially amounts to Thousand Island dressing. As far as recipes go, the tree is pretty straightforward: It calls only for cooked shrimp, pimiento-stuffed olives, a trip to the craft store, and hours of your life.

Which brings me back to my meltdown. How did I crawl out of this Shrimp Tree shame spiral? Easy: I stopped messing around with the parsley and began affixing careful columns of shrimp and olives to the tree (using halved toothpicks as instructed), tucking the parsley in and around the crustaceans until the whole tree was flowering with green. Lo and behold, a Christmas miracle!

Cover a 12-inch-high styrofoam cone (approximately 5 inches in diameter at the bottom) with wide-mesh screening. Fasten with pins or staples.

Separate parsley into individual sprigs and insert stems in screening. Cover entire cone with parsley sprigs. Insert wooden picks in vertical rows in styrofoam cone, spacing picks about 1 inch apart. Place a shrimp, curved-side up, on each pick. Place additional wooden picks in the curve of each shrimp and fasten small pimiento-stuffed olives on each stick. Top cone with an additional stuffed olive and surround with parsley sprigs. Sprinkle or spray entire surface lightly with water and cover with plastic wrap. Chill until serving. Serve with Spanish Sauce as a dip.

Tips from the Test Kitchen“I don’t even know where to begin. The whole thing is atrocious, but in an amazing way. Is there a way you could incorporate other seafood? Maybe alternate columns of shrimp with bacon-wrapped scallops? Could you wrap the whole thing in Christmas lights? I would use different kinds of stuffed olives, like garlic-stuffed olives or feta-stuffed olives. And I might just serve this with a horseradish-y cocktail sauce instead of the ‘Spanish Sauce.’” —Dawn Perry, senior food editor